The agony of Afghanistan continues unabated. According to a report prepared for the United Nation`s Commission on Human Rights by special rapporteur Prof. Felix Ermacora and submitted to the General Assembly, the torment includes mutilation, torture, rape, imprisonment without trial, conscription and deportation of children, booby-trapped toys, soap and snuffboxes, forced rural evacuations, destruction of crops and starvation. These Soviet atrocities are routinely wreaked on the Afghan people in an effort to subdue opposition and destroy their traditional society.
Even before receiving Ermacora`s report, the General Assembly, by a 122-12 vote (19 abstentions), called for the immediate withdrawal of
``foreign`` (read Soviet) troops from Afghanistan as a necessary step to ending the suffering of the Afghan people.
If the list of atrocities seems astounding to us, the arguments put forth by the Soviets for the invasion seem even more astounding.
With about 120,000 occupation troops in Afghanistan, the Soviets consider these UN discussions, debates and vote an outrage. The Soviets say they had a right to invade Afghanistan without interference. The move into Afghanistan, declared then-General Secretary Yuri Andropov, ``was a lofty act of loyalty to the principle of proletarian internationalism, which was necessary to defend the interests of our motherland.``
In the Soviet view, the solution to the suffering of Afghanistan is also clear. Those who caused the war must end it. The United States, the French, the Chinese must stop supporting the Afghan resistance. Then there will be peace. The United Nations negotiators have long reported that Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan depends on ``guarantees`` that support for the Afghan resistance movement will end. Refusal to guarantee ``nonintervention`` in Afghanistan is, in the Soviet view, the major obstacle to peace.
Soviet invasion, occupation and repression are not obstacles to peace. Resistance by others is the obstacle. Once the ``bandits and
counterrevolutionary gangs`` have been disarmed and peace restored, Soviet troops can depart.
This Soviet argument is not limited to Afghanistan. It is applied everywhere. Thus Soviet spokesmen insist that Cuban troops in Angola do not constitute an external interference; those who aid UNITA are interfering. Sandinista repression in Nicaragua does not disrupt peace in that country; the contras disrupt peace. Soviet support for the FMLN guerrillas serves the cause of peace and justice in El Salvador, but U.S. support for the contras causes war and havoc in Nicaragua.
Soviet support for anyone advances peace, but ``the hallmark of U.S. dollar mercenaries here in Afghanistan, as in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Lebanon, is one and the same . . . blond (Krasnaya Zvezda, Nov. 14).
Inevitably, Ronald Reagan`s proposals made at the United Nations for resolving regional conflicts were rejected by the Soviets as ``nothing else than an attempt at justifying the interference of the United States and the countries that depend on it in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Kampuchea and Ethiopia`` (Tass, Nov. 11).
Inevitably the Soviets` alternative peace proposal for Afghanistan puts the burden of proof on the United States to provide ``guarantees of nonintervention`` to facilitate Soviet withdrawal.
It is really too absurd. A process that puts pressure on the United States government to provide guarantees of nonintervention in a country ravaged by 120,000 Soviet troops will not--cannot--lead to internal reconciliation with respect to Afghan rights and national self-determination.